Geneva offers Swiss bliss

Charming pedestrian streets are lined with shops, cafes and the flags of Switzerland and old Geneva.

While the hotel chain celebrates its spa culture around the world, the Metropole Geneva may be the only member of the Swissotel family with no freestanding spa due to space limits in this prime real estate. What you get instead is steam-driven room service: a sensual spa shower that's a touch of divine luxury after a morning swim or a day's shopping.

Any treatment you choose from the spa menu features the hotel's exclusive line of Purovel cosmetics, which you can see in their moment of creation by touring the nearby farm collective that produces them.

Alexander Reber, our 57-year-old guide, explains that he and the other nine farmers in the group represent families that have worked the land for more than a century. The current generation cultivates a hybrid mint, lemon balm and canola among other crops that are distilled for their skin-pampering qualities and fragrances. As he talks, we enjoy the sunshine, ruffling the fragrant stalks of mint as if they are puppies, and later walk over to see huge fields of rose-colored beebalm, where a blue ceramic pig－as big as a bus－stands guard. That porcine charmer alone is worth the short drive to the farm, a selfie magnet with her two suckling piglets.

In the fall, myriad small wineries can be enjoyed as workers harvest grapes along the shoreline north of the city proper. Winter is a festival season; the alfresco cafes become sauna bars, fondue pots are simmering everywhere, and you can enjoy it all after a day on the ski slopes.

Year-round there are spectacular museums－many are free on the first Sunday of the month, and the Geneva Pass is good for museum entries, free public transport and discounts on city tours, speedboat rental, theater tickets and more. (Prices start at 25 Swiss francs－$27－for 24 hours.)

When warm weather returns, lakeside cafes spring to life.

Tourist boats ply the waters. Parks and beaches hum with reveling locals and visitors. While the city is celebrated as a business center, there are plenty of attractions for families and kids, from feeding ducks and swans at a popular park to an electric-train tour or the Tarzan-inspired tree park (with irresistible rubber-tire swings) at Baby Plage.

Contact the writer at michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn